Title: Four Legs and a Tail

"Mom?"

She lifted her head at the sound of her son's voice. "Yes darling?"

"Was that for me?" Kunzite's voice, but not his image, came through her communicator. The reception had been flickering off and on from his position out in the field, somewhere along the Tigris River. It wasn't a good sign, and she was itching to get out there and assess the area.

"No, it's Marcus. Hold on one second." Minako pulled her ponytail out and began to retie it as she faced her soon-to-be seven-year-old son. "What's the matter?"

He took a deep breath, his bright blue eyes landing everywhere except on her face. "Can I have a cat for my birthday?"

His birthday was in a week, and he had been talking about it for months after the King told him that seven was a lucky number, and that he would never again have as much fun in his entire, extensive life as his seventh year. Just another one of the many things she had Endymion to thank for; Marcus was intelligent, but incredibly naïve in some respects, and it had taken them weeks to convince him that pigeons didn't really thirst for human blood. Or that he would grow horns on his sixteenth birthday.

She had an answer for him right away. "No."

He had probably imagined a very different outcome, because he squirmed like a downed electric line. "Moooom! Why?"

The real reason was because after years with Artemis, she would be Goddess-damned if she ever shoveled cat turds out of another litter box, but she chose a different tactic to let him down. "Because we're going to have a baby next year. You know that."

He threw himself across her lap, desperate in his misery. "We don't need another baby! We already have Felix!"

She reached down to stroke his soft, butter-blonde hair. "Sorry, love, it's not up to us."

His face was pressed against her thighs, and his next words affirmed that he forgot that there was an open communication. "Dad said I could."

Kunzite's voice came through on the other end of the line, his tone dangerous. "Dad said nothing of the sort."

Minako frowned. "Marcus, what did we tell you about lying?"

"I'm sorry!" He lifted his head, and his plainly miserable expression made a chip of ice in her chest fall away. "This isn't fair! I don't have anything that wasn't someone else's!" He pulled at his shirt, which Minako recognized as one of Erie's old ones. "All my toys were someone else's, all my t-shirts, my backpack…Mom, you said I could get a new one and you gave me Andy's old one! I'm sick of getting everything after everyone's done using it. I want something that's mine first."

That was true. But around that time, a famine had threatened a huge chunk of the Middle East, an unspecified threat against the Queen emerged that had never been completely eradicated, and Felix had developed some sort of allergy that caused him to get violently ill before they could diagnose it. Marcus's new backpack had been lost in the shuffle, and only now she realized how much it meant to him.

She was ashamed. Marcus had never asked for anything before; he was too cheerful, too pleasant, and accommodating to a fault. A sweet boy, always smiling, and so different than independent Erie, introverted Andy, headstrong Cherie, and curious Felix. He tended to get lost amongst the stronger personalities and dominating physicality of his siblings.

But she was the mother, and he could not see her weakening just yet. "Your father and I will discuss it." She cupped her hand under his chin and lifted his face to hers. Blue eyes, just like her own, stared back at her. "Did you finish cleaning your room?"

"Um."

She sighed. "You were supposed to have it done by tonight."

"I know, but—"

"No 'buts'. Go. I'm going to come and check in a half an hour, and you'd better be almost finished."

"Mom—"

"Marcus, now."

He shuffled off to straighten his room filled with hand-me-downs. Minako waited until the door was shut before speaking. "What do you think, love?"

Kunzite was silent for a few moments, and she knew that the cogs were turning in his head. "Did we really forget the backpack?"

"Yes." She let her head fall to the desktop. A dizzying remnant of morning sickness twisted in her stomach. "And we got Cherie that slingshot she wanted for her birthday."

"A cat is not a slingshot."

"They both do a lot of damage, though." She lifted her head and leaned it against her elbow, rubbing her face with her palm. "I just don't want to have to take care of the damned thing. All the litter boxes, and hairballs, and stinky cat food…plus the new baby. It would just be too much."

"It may be a good way to teach him responsibility. And he's right: I don't think he even has a pair of underwear to call his own."

She sighed; it looked like they were getting another addition to the family along with the one that was already on deck, whether she liked it or not. "It doesn't sleep in Marcus's room. That place is a pigsty as it is."

"Fair enough."

"And I'll let the thing starve to death before I open another can of cat food."

"I don't doubt that you will."


Kunzite took him to pick out his new pet the day before his birthday, while Minako stayed home and drank gallons of orange juice. She had been craving citrus fruit for weeks.

She had just opened another carton when they returned. It fell to the floor with a crash, chugging sticky orange liquid across the tiled floor.

It took her a moment to find her voice. "What the hell is that!?"

Marcus grinned and stroked the scaly green back of his new pet. "I was going to get a kitten but I got this instead."

Kunzite reached down and picked up the emptying juice container. "You spilled this."

She gaped at the creature perched on her son's arm, its tail coiled around like a fiddlehead fern. Its eyes were black pinpricks in bulging sockets, which seemed to be moving independently from each other as it took in its new surroundings. "It has horns!" she screamed.

The other children had come rushing into the kitchen to bear witness to the commotion. Cherie's jaw dropped as she threw herself closer. "Oh, wow, Marcus, you got a dinosaur!"

He swelled with pride as he held his arm up. "It's not a dinosaur, it's a Jackson's Chameleon. I get to feed him crickets."

"Want one, too!" Felix cried, reaching up to grab at the chameleon. Kunzite intercepted him with one hand.

"Felix, that's Marcus's pet. You will not touch it unless you ask him first."

Minako grabbed Andy and held him in front of her like a shield. "Oh my Goddess, that thing is horrifying!" The chameleon locked a beady eye on her, and opened its mouth, and she screamed at the sight of all the pink tissue. "AH! It's mouth opened! Get it away from me!" She peered around Andy's body and locked eyes with Kunzite. "What in the hell were you thinking?"

He shrugged. "He wanted the lizard."

"It's not a lizard, it's an evil freaking demon straight from hell!" She started backing away, her feet sloshing through the spilled juice. "Don't get it near me! Marcus, it's going to live in your room, understand? You will not bring it out for any reason whatsoever unless to bury it, am I clear?"

Even her hysterical scolding couldn't break his good mood. "Yep, OK Mom!"

She hit the counter with her back and tried to stabilize her heart rate. "Oh my Goddess, I'm never going in your room again. Sorry, honey, but not while that creature is living in there."

Behind the throng of kids, she heard Kunzite chuckle. "I think that was part of the appeal."

By the time Marcus was ten, his room contained another Jackson's, a collared lizard, two corn snakes, a leopard gecko, a common tortoise, and a pacman frog. Minako never got closer than the doorway.